presented by Cantor, unaware as they were that even for some of the pious it might be more a source of horror than of comfort to have one's every action already decided by the dispassionate hand of an angelic scribe. Cantor's theology was of its time--it is easy to imagine how a scholar forced suddenly to labor long hours in what seemed a vain hope of saving a new colony from a slow, withering death might yearn to believe that all trials were foreordained to be temporary. I reject, of course, their assertion that it was revealed to them by Scansis, for we now know that Scansis communicates only through sourcery, which had not yet been discovered. In any event, Cantor's hardship made seductive a single true path already laid out--but ideas are not true simply because they are seductive. In fact, to borrow a religious term, the Book of Eternity is not just a crutch but also a clipa, a hollow shell that appears substantial only because we, dazzled, participate in fooling ourselves. A clipa, under scrutiny, evaporates like a mirage--what proof is there of a future already written? Religious scholars say that true syllables of the Name remain true [ ]